


Strays

by lionofsounis



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Crack, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Crack, Lots of kissing, Married Couple, Seriously stop me, adrien is a cat irl, rated T for discussion of and actions related to the frickle frack, someone save me from this i started it and i cant stop, theres a sequel coming, which i didn’t expect to happen in a fic about a stray cat but here we are
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-09-20 15:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9498644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionofsounis/pseuds/lionofsounis
Summary: “He followed me home.”“No. No! Absolutely not. You already have a cat.”"You do know you're not actually a cat, right?""You take that back."To no one's surprise, Marinette’s a sucker for stray cats. But it turns out Adrien’s a little... territorial.





	1. It Followed Me Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **FRENCH TRANSLATIONS**  
>  _bonjour, chaton_ = hello, kitten  
>  _désolé, mon petit chat_ = I’m sorry, little cat  
>  _mon amour_ = my love  
>  _petit Napoléon_ = little Napoleon  
>  _grenouille_ = frog
> 
> I haven’t spoken French in years idk conjugation anymore lmao sorry if theres mistakes
> 
> this is basically a crack fic i dont know anything all i know is i love cats and adrien’s my sunshine boy this is what inhabiting my brain 24/7 feels like enjoy the ride yall

Marinette hardly notices the first time it happens.

 

She only realizes what’s going on when she’s unlocking the door and she hears a plaintive _“mew”_. She looks down in confusion at the cat, a fluffy orange tabby with a tail like a feather boa.

 

 _“Bonjour, chaton,”_ she says. The cat mews again in response. She reaches down to scratch its ears. It purrs magnificently and rubs against her knee, meowing sadly when she straightens up again, but she does not give in. _“_ _Désolé, mon petit chat,”_ she says, without much actual remorse. The cat mews again, and tries to follow her inside.

 

It’s a bit of a trick, considering the bag of groceries she’s carrying, but she’s not a superhero for nothing, and she slips into the house without further incident.

 

When Adrien gets home, he presses a kiss to her temple and asks after her day.

 

“It was fine,” she says, chopping vegetables for dinner. He grabs a knife and joins her. “I was almost adopted by another cat on the way home.”

 

Adrien looks up from the veggies, indignant. “Excuse me?”

 

“Mm, a cat followed me home. Or at least, I think it followed me home. I only noticed it when I got to the door, actually.”

 

His eyes are narrowed. “Is he still here? I have to go fight him.”

 

She can’t help but laugh at him. “You’re not going to fight a poor little stray.”

 

“I will if he’s putting the moves on my girl.”

 

Marinette snorts. “I don’t think you need to worry about competing with a stray cat, _mon amour.”_

 

Adrien goes back to chopping vegetables, but he doesn’t look happy about it. Marinette just rolls her eyes.

 

* * *

 

The cat is back the next day. Marinette frowns a little in concern when she gets home from work and it’s waiting for her again. It greets her with another of its forlorn little cries. This time she does more than scratch its ears. She sits down on the step and gives him some of the love he seems to desperately need.

 

Then she goes inside and leaves him on the porch.

 

Adrien catches a glimpse of the cat that night, but it scurries away from him when he makes eye contact.

 

“Not to worry, My Lady,” he says upon entering the house. “The cat knows you’re spoken for.”

 

“What?”

 

“Your new cat. I saw him on my way in, and I said ‘not here, mangy stray, My Lady already has a cat to cuddle with.’”

 

“You’re so melodramatic.”

 

“What can I say? You bring out the best in me.”

 

Marinette rolls her eyes.

 

* * *

 

He’s -- the cat, that is -- there again a couple days later. Marinette doesn’t know what he’s been doing in the meantime, but that’s just the way of stray cats, she supposes. She gives him a few scratches, lets him rub against her shins, and listens to him purr.

 

Then she goes inside.

 

She goes back outside twenty minutes later with a saucer of milk.

 

When Adrien arrives, the cat is devouring the treat, so rapturous that he doesn’t even notice his rival's presence.

 

Adrien sniffs in disdain.

 

“You’ve betrayed me!” he whines at Marinette the second he's through the door.

 

She looks up from her notebook, unimpressed. He flops down on the couch on top of her, practically crushing her legs. “Adrien!” she laughs, trying to pull out from under him. “Don’t be so dramatic. Is this about the cat?”

 

“The cat! He’s not a cat, he’s a usurper. Or should I say, a usur _purr_.”

 

“Ugh,” Marinette groans at the pun and swats her husband with a pillow.

 

“And you! I can’t believe you’d forsake me for such a low, mangy, flea-ridden alley cat.”

 

As always, Marinette rolls her eyes. But his words make her think. “You know, though, in all seriousness, I don’t think he _is_ an alley cat.”

 

“He is,” Adrien insists, petulantly, “he’s small and weak. I could take him. I think we sh--”

 

“No really, though. I think we should put up posters or something. He’s much too clean and well-groomed to be a stray, don’t you think? And he’s awfully comfortable around people.”

 

Once she gets Adrien to stop monologuing, he does agree with her. They put up some ads on the internet, and in the pet column of the newspaper. Marinette keeps an eye out for missing ads fitting the cat’s description. They call shelter to see if anyone's looking for the cat.

 

Three weeks go by, but nothing comes of it. Meanwhile, it seems the cat is getting more and more fond of them.

 

Well, of Marinette, anyway.

 

It escalates: she gives him milk at first, and then whatever leftovers and scraps there are from dinner. Adrien grumps around all evening when she finally breaks down and buys cat food.

 

One day, she overhears him muttering something about the “petit Napoléon” as he comes in from work, and the name sticks in her mind, but it’s another week before she says it aloud to Adrien. She doesn’t mean to, but it just slips out, and he wears an expression of utter betrayal as she slaps a hand over her mouth.

 

“You can’t name him!” he cries. “Then you get too attached!”

 

 _“You’re_ the one who named him, kitty cat,” she laughs, and he fumes silently for a moment, annoyed to have been caught talking to the cat at all, even to insult it.

 

“Well! He’s a throne-stealing revolutionary. He should be in jail.”

 

“But he’s so cute! He doesn’t have anyone else to look after him and it’s going to be winter soon. We can’t just leave him to cruel streets of Paris.”

 

“I can.”

 

Marinette edges in close to his face, and puts on a sly smile. “Aw, come on, _chaton_ , don’t you want to have kittens?”

 

His glare flickers in spite of the ridiculousness of the question. He can feel her warm breath on his face, drawing his eyes down to her lips. “Marinette, are you propositioning me?”

 

She curls a hand into the hair at the back of his neck. “Maybe.” He swallows hard. “It's just that he’s such a pretty little kitten --” she’s practically in his lap now, her lips ghosting over his cheek as she speaks “-- and I really think he needs a little love.”

 

“Oh, does he?” Adrien manages a scoff.

 

“Mmhmm,” she presses a kiss to the corner of his lips. “Doesn’t that remind you of someone?” She strings her hands around his neck and looks at him with those big sapphire eyes and he remembers what he’s known all along.

 

He’s always known they were going to keep the cat.

 

But he doesn’t give up quite yet.

 

“You already have a cat,” he insists, smoothing a hand up her back and burying it in her hair.

 

“Mm, but I’m really good with cats,” she says, leaning into him.

 

When he met Ladybug, years ago, he’d fallen in love at first sight. He’d dreamed about holding her in his arms, about kissing her, about who she could be, and when he found out, he dreamed about holding Marinette in his arms and kissing her and -- well, other things.

 

But he’d never imagined arguing over whether to keep a stray cat while doing some of those _other things._

 

She _is_ good with cats, he has to admit that.

 

“And anyways,” she pauses for a long, slow kiss to his jaw. He feels her teeth scrape against his three-day stubble and he can’t hold back a groan. “He followed me home. It’s not my fault I’m irresistible.”

 

“Oh, are you now?”

 

“I think you’re proving that I am.”

 

He pulls her in for a kiss in spite of his words, knowing that he is, in fact, proving her right. “Are you really bribing me with sex so I'll agree to keep a stray cat?”

 

“Who said we were going to have sex?” she asks, smirking.

 

He raises an eyebrow.

 

“I use sex to keep stray cats all the time.” She’s laughing, and kisses him again. “Or you wouldn’t still be here.”

 

He lets them fall gently backwards on the couch. “You’re wrong there, Princess. I’d stay even without the sex.”

 

Marinette grins. “But it helps, doesn’t it?”

 

“Admittedly… yes. Yes, it does.”

 

She can feel his smile against her lips when they kiss again. She’s still giggling when they pull away. “So we can keep the cat?”

 

He shakes his head, smiling. “You know I’m not going to say no to you.”

 

“Are you talking about the cat or the sex?”

 

“Both, obviously. After all, you’re irresistible.”

 

She laughs harder than she should at that.

 

“It wasn’t _that_ funny, Bugaboo,” he says dryly.

 

Marinette considers this between kisses and undoing the buttons on his shirt. She supposes the laughter is partly because of their easy banter, and partly because they’re _definitely_ going to have sex now, and partly because she gets to keep the cat. But mostly she laughs because --

 

“This is a perfect moment, Adrien, we should be laughing. Right here, right now, my life is perfect.” She plants a chaste kiss on his cheek.

 

“Because of me or the cat?”

 

She snorts, but her expression is gentle, and she trails a delicate finger down his jawline. “You’re perfect,” she says softly, honestly.

 

He’s not, he knows, but in that second, he feels like he might be, just because she believes it.

 

_A poor little stray cat, desperately in need of love, following Marinette home._

 

He supposes he can relate to that in some ways.

 

“You’re _purr_ fect,” he tells her, and she whacks him with a pillow.

 

* * *

 

The cat -- hereby referred to as Napoléon -- still has to wait sometime before he’s officially moved into the house. Partly because Adrien and Marinette are decidedly _busy_ that whole evening, and partly because Adrien draws the line at letting him in before they’ve taken him to the vet.

 

“I never took you to the vet,” Marinette retorts and bemoans the cat being outside in the cold for a few days. But ultimately, she agrees it’s the wisest choice.

 

When they do take him to the vet, it turns out Napoléon doesn’t have fleas or any other communicable diseases. At home, Marinette practically waltzes into the house with the orange fluffball in her arms.

 

Adrien’s still a little miffed at being replaced, but he’s glad to see Marinette so happy.

 

By the time he follows her into the house, she’s already filling the sink to give Napoléon a bath, cooing and talking to him as she does. Adrien makes a colossal effort not to sigh, merely plucking the cat shampoo from their shopping bag and placing it on the counter beside her.

 

“Don’t fill the sink too much,” he advises. “You can just give him a sort of shower and he won’t be as grouchy about it as getting completely submerged.”

 

Marinette chirps a happy “okay” in response, and turns off the tap. Once she has Napoléon under the water, he starts to squirm, making it difficult to wash him and hang onto him. Adrien had planned to leave Marinette to her own devices, so he could mope in the company of some video games, but he sighs and relents, stepping in beside her. “Do you want me to hold him, or do the shampoo?”

 

Marinette beams at him and he feels a little more charitable towards the cat. “You can do the shampoo, I don’t want him to scratch you.”

 

Napoléon's not much of a scratcher -- Marinette's wrists survive the ordeal with only a few minor scrapes -- and he's not a terrible cat to wash either, it turns out. He does try to escape whenever Marinette’s grip remotely loosens, but eventually he’s clean, and Adrien goes for a towel. Marinette bundles the tabby up in it like a baby, and carries him around for a full hour, chattering away to him all the while.

 

When Adrien decides to start dinner, he can hear her over the chicken frying in the pan and his chopping veggies on the counter:

 

“Who’s the cutest little kitty in the whole world? Yes you are, yes you are.”

 

“You are so pretty, Napoléon. You are the prettiest little tabby in all of Paris.”

 

“Oh, you look so sweet with your little bow tie!”

 

Adrien rolls his eyes to the heavens. Marinette appears in the kitchen with a (mostly) dry and perfectly brushed Napoléon. The cat is wearing a floppy black ribbon around his neck, tied in a bow.

 

“Look, Adrien! Look how handsome he is.”

 

“Yeah, he’s… he’s something.”

 

Napoléon looks decidedly unimpressed, but is apparently resigned to Marinette’s gushing. Adrien shoots him a sympathetic look, and the cat responds with a forlorn meow.

 

“Don't look at me, I warned you not to adopt her,” he tells the dressed-up cat. “She’s unstoppable.”

 

Marinette flashes him a smile for that, but she's only half-listening. She’s too busy thinking up ways to expand her fashion line to cats. “I’ve never designed an outfit for an animal before. I wonder…” She whips a notebook out from nowhere and starts scribbling. Napoléon settles on the stool next to hers, trying to lick away the effects of his bath.

 

Adrien just shakes his head.

 

* * *

 

Despite his brief commiseration with Napoléon, Adrien stands firm on his ‘no cat in the bedroom’ stipulation, which of course leads Marinette into the much-overused, “I guess you’ll have to sleep on the couch!” joke.

 

Frankly, the joke’s getting a little old, but it’s such an Adrien joke to make that he can’t really complain about it. At any rate, he insists on the bedroom, she agrees easily, and bedtime is the first time that day that he feels like Marinette’s looking at him and not Napoléon.

 

This is his idea of a perfect moment: They’re in bed. She’s leaning into his chest, peppering kisses across his face. His hands are hovering at the hem of her (read: his) shirt.

 

And then there’s scratching at their door. Followed by a loud meow.

 

Marinette bolts upright, elbowing Adrien hard enough that it almost knocks the wind out of him.

 

“Sorry!” she gasps, rubbing over the sore spot.

 

“It’s fine,” he croaks. “Go look after my replacement.”

 

She gives him a look, but goes to the door. “We’re busy, minou,” she tells Napoléon, and Adrien chokes.

 

Marinette doesn’t seem to notice; instead of addressing him, she scoops Napoléon up in her arms and disappears for a few minutes. When she returns, she closes the door behind her.

 

“I locked him in the laundry room, so he won’t bother us.”

 

“Good,” Adrien says, though he’s still a little pouty.

 

“Sorry I called him that,” she says, surprising him. She crawls back into bed. “I didn’t realize it would bother you.”

 

“It’s okay,” he says, but his tone disagrees.

 

She looks amused. “You’re a terrible liar, _chaton_. I heard you squawking when I said it.”

 

“I didn’t squawk,” he mutters. “Cats don’t squawk.”

 

“Hissing, then,” she amends.

 

“I wasn’t hissing!”

 

“Look, the point is, I promise I won’t use any of your names on him, okay? You’re the only _minou_ in the house now. In name, anyway. We’ll just call Napoléon… I don’t know, _grenouille_ or something.”

 

Adrien snorts, but says, “it’s a deal.”

 

Marinette smiles down at him. “Where were we?”

 

He stretches up to kiss her. “Mm, about here, I think.” He slides his hands under her shirt, pressing into the small of her back.

 

“Are you really jealous of Napoléon?” she asks a while later, between kisses.

 

His answer has to wait til his mouth moves away from her neck, but when it comes, he says, “only when you say he’s the prettiest cat in Paris.”

 

“Oh!” She pulls back, propping herself up on his chest. She looks mischevious. “Oh, really?”

 

“It wounds me to the core,” Adrien says seriously.

 

“I think I _actually_ said he was the prettiest _tabby_ in Paris. And you, sir, are no tabby.”

 

“And the cutest kitty in the world.”

 

“Oh, well, that was an obvious lie.”

 

“Obvious?”

 

Her finger traces a figure eight on his collarbone. “Obvious because Chat Noir is _much_ cuter.”

 

“Chat Noir, huh? And what about Adrien Agreste?”

 

Marinette frowns a little. “You do know you're not actually a cat, right?”

 

Adrien gasps in mock horror. _“Excuse me?”_

 

She just looks at him, unaffected.

 

“You take that back.”

 

“No.”

 

“Take it back.”

 

“Make me.” She grins.

 

He catches her wrist and rolls over, pinning her beneath him. She yelps in surprise, then dissolves into giggling. “You're crushing me to death,” she says breathlessly, still laughing. “Get off!”

 

“Not till you say it.”

 

She squirms a little, but it's useless. “Fine.” She flashes a wicked smile and leans up to kiss the underside of his jaw. “You --” she slides up the line of his jawbone with her lips, kissing him between words: “are -- the prettiest -- sweetest -- handsomest -- cleverest -- _cutest_ \-- kitty cat -- in the whole world.” By now, her lips are brushing his ear, and he can feel her breath as she whispers into it. An involuntary shudder ripples through him.

 

“Does that do it for you, _chaton?”_

 

He can feel his face burning, but his voice is smooth when he replies. "Yeah, that works for me." His hands slide up from her wrists to intertwine her fingers with his. “Exactly what I wanted to hear.” His lips capture the smirk in the corner of her mouth. He moves to roll back into their original position but Marinette keeps him in place with one strong hand.

 

“I thought I was crushing you to death."

 

Her hand is burning on his waist. He feels euphoric and lightheaded all at once. Her fingernails trace lightly over his abdomen, making his stomach muscles jump instinctively. He hears himself groan when she kisses him again.

 

“Also an obvious lie.”

 

“I don't know how to feel about all this lying you're doing.” He releases her hands to tug her shirt over her head.

 

She pulls him back down to kiss him, their bodies crushed together. “Don't worry, _minou_ ,” she tells him, catching his lower lip between her teeth. “Everything I said about you was true."

 

_“You'll always be my favourite cat.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok ok so hear me out
> 
> i know the adrien-is-a-cat-irl thing has been done 19483957 times before, and the sequel to this definitely involves him adopting 9084392752983 kittens becAUSE I LIVE FOR THAT SHIT
> 
> (seriously. i have been thinking abt the babes adopting cats for 837475 years. when they retire from superheroing they start the old friends cat sanctuary. marinette learns to bake yummy healthy cat treats and adrien imprints on all the abandoned kittens and i walk straight into an open grave of cute. its a bloodbath in here someone save me)
> 
> BUT for this fic pls enjoy adrien as the classic jealous territorial cat (aka my cat irl lol)
> 
> stayed tuned for more shenanigans! adrien will be ungrumpified! there will be kittens! other things i cant disclose will happen!


	2. The Cat Came Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT TURNED INTO A 3 PARTER AS I WAS WRITING THIS IDK WHAT HAPPENED
> 
> French:  
>  _monsieur_ =mister  
>  _non_ =no  
>  _petit monstre_ =little monster

Inevitably, the cat grows on Adrien.

 

Marinette’s still never heard him say a kind word to the animal, but he complains less. It’s not a huge change, maybe, but it’s something.

 

They’ve had Napoléon for just under three months when The Incident happens.

 

Despite his humble beginnings as a stray, Napoléon spends ninety-nine percent of his time indoors. In fact, he's never expressed any interest whatsoever in going outside. So when Adrien and Marinette get back from grocery shopping, both of them overburdened with shopping bags, they don't consider the consequences of their actions. Marinette finagles the door open somehow, and Adrien, having no free hands, holds it open by leaning into it. It's a team effort, and that -- combined with their equal unwillingness to take more than one trip from the car for the groceries -- has them feeling pretty accomplished.

 

Of course, this is the moment that a fluffy orange blur shoots past them and disappears around the corner.

 

“Napoléon!” Marinette yelps, almost tripping over him. She starts to go after him but Adrien stops her.

 

“We'll get him in a minute, bugaboo. He won't go far. Let's bring the groceries in first.”

 

They leave the bags on the counter and troop back out to catch their wayward pet. They expect to find him in the alley consuming all the garbage he can get his paws on, but when they wander out to the back of the house, he's nowhere to be seen.

 

Adrien thinks it's odd. As a cat (sort of) and as someone who is also irredeemably attached to Marinette, it baffles him that Napoléon would be at all interested in leaving. He scratches his head in confusion and checks their neighbour's trash can.

 

Marinette heckles him a little for looking in other people's garbage, and he breathes a sigh of relief. He was afraid she'd be worried.

 

But she's really more annoyed. “That silly cat!” she exclaims, joining him at Mrs Alain’s garbage can. “I can't believe he'd do something so stupid. He's never wanted to go outside before!”

 

“Yeah, usually it's a struggle to get him off the couch,” Adrien agrees, grinning at Marinette when she shoots him a glare.

 

They look for a little longer, but eventually Marinette calls it. “Let's go in. He'll come back when he wants to eat,” she says in a tone of complete and utter exasperation. She rolls her eyes heavenward.

 

* * *

 

It takes another hour or so for Marinette to start worrying. She’s quiet about it, but Adrien notices she keeps checking the windows at the front of the house to see if Napoléon has appeared on the front step.

 

He hasn't.

 

After several hours have passed, she's visibly distressed. She's distracted through supper and bites her lip more than she chews her food, to the point where there's an angry swollen spot on the bottom left of it. They go out to search again after supper, and again before bed, but Napoléon does not appear.

 

“I'm sure he'll turn up,” Adrien tells Marinette, ruffling her hair as she spits toothpaste into the sink. She's been sighing with increasing regularity since dinner.

 

She sighs again, but smiles up at him. He smiles back, but he’s already looking away from her when she crushes his middle in a hug, and he almost chokes on his toothpaste.

 

“Thanks for looking for him with me,” Marinette says, her face buried in his shirt.

 

He shakes his head with a rueful smile. “Of course, princess. Can't leave the poor guy out on his own in the wild.”

 

“You're being silly and dramatic again, but I mean it. I appreciate that you’d try so hard to find a cat you don’t even like for me.”

 

“I like Napoléon,” he argues. His tone sounds surprised because he is: somehow the statement doesn't feel like a lie. He stares at his reflection for a moment, blinking in confusion.

 

“Whatever, _chaton.”_

 

“I'm serious!” he exclaims around his toothbrush. “I mean, I didn't like him at first, but now we have solidarity. Mutual respect, if you will.”

 

She rolls her eyes. “Mutual respect,” she snorts. “Okay.”

 

“It's true! It's like you said the first day: we were both just lonely little kittens looking for someone to love,” his voice takes on a theatrical tone. He puts one hand on his heart. “And then you found us.”

 

She snorts again, but when he looks at her in the bathroom mirror she's smiling.

 

“You're ridiculous.”

 

“You're wonderful.”

 

She flushes a little. “Seriously though, do you think he’ll be back?” She chews her lip again.

 

Adrien turns to face her. “He’s your cat now, my Lady. I think he’ll always come back to you.”

 

Her blush deepens a shade, and it would be a sweet moment if not for the toothbrush hanging out of Adrien’s mouth.

 

“Are you talking about yourself or Napoléon, now?”

 

“Both,” he says, and kisses her forehead.

 

“Ah, Adrien! Toothpaste!” she yelps, scrubbing at the blue-white goop he leaves behind.

 

He laughs.

 

* * *

 

Marinette doesn't sleep well that night. As much as she thinks most of Adrien’s cat-ish behaviours are just him being dramatic (the superhero thing is no excuse: certainly no one has ever caught _her_ acting like a human ladybug), she finds herself hoping there is some part of him -- a truly cat-ish part -- that really is in tune with what Napoléon is thinking.

 

Gazing at Adrien’s sleeping face beside her in the moonlight, she smiles faintly. Because she believes him. She believes Adrien that Napoléon will be back.

 

She just hopes he's safe in the meantime.

 

A soft kiss ghosts against the corner of Adrien’s mouth, and then Marinette drifts off too.

 

* * *

 

She wakes the next morning with a start that jars Adrien. Marinette sits up with a jolt, dislodging the blankets so that his back chills instantly. He makes a sort of hissing noise.

 

“I’m going to see if he’s back!” she says, nearly leaping out of bed.

 

He’s never seen her in such a hurry to get out of bed (except for when she’s late) -- usually they have plenty of time for early-morning cuddling that only ends when he checks the time and insists.

 

(Marinette hates being cold, and is _not_ a morning person.)

 

He sulks a little as she pulls on one of his sweaters and disappears down the stairs. He wishes, briefly, selfishly, for Napoléon’s safe return, if only because the cat’s disappearance is cutting into his cuddling time.

 

But Marinette returns some time later and settles back into bed with a huff.

 

“Nothing?” he asks, tucking her under his chin with a kiss.

 

“Nothing,” she sighs.

 

“Hmph,” is all he says.

 

She sighs again. “Maybe he went home.”

 

“Home?”

 

“Well, it’s like I said, he obviously wasn’t an alley cat. He was much too healthy, and much too friendly. Maybe he just got lost, and now he found his way home.”

 

“But why now?”

 

“You’re the cat, you tell me.”

 

“Hmph,” he says again. Then, “you’d think someone would have answered our ads if he _was_ lost.”

 

“Well… maybe he wasn’t lost. Maybe someone ditched him.”

 

“What?”

 

“You know how it is, sometimes people realize they can’t take care of their pets anymore and they just drop them off on the side of the road somewhere. Maybe he’s trying to find home.”

 

Adrien snorts. “I’m pretty sure that only happens in Disney movies.”

 

Marinette twists to frown up at him, but says nothing.

  
“What?” he asks.

 

“It’s just… sometimes I forget you had a sheltered childhood.”

 

“Okay, I mean, I _know_ people do that, but like… how often can that possibly happen?”

 

“Um, all the time?”

 

“No way. Why wouldn’t you just take your pet to an animal shelter like a _normal_ person?”

 

“Because people are awful sometimes?”

 

Adrien stares at her for a moment. “No.” He shakes his head. “Who would do that? I mean, come on.”

 

Marinette is up on her elbows now, her frown even deeper. “Wow.”

 

“What do you mean, wow?”

 

“I mean, wow, you really don’t know how the world works sometimes.”

 

“I’m a superhero, I’ve seen plenty of how the world works!”

 

But Marinette just shakes her head and settles back down. “One day we’re going to find a box full of kittens in a ditch and your brain is going to explode.”

 

“Who would do that!?” he exclaims.

 

“You’d be surprised.”

 

He has to ponder this for a while. Of course, he’d seen stray cats before Napoléon, and he knows people sometimes have to give up their pets, and that _sometimes_ people ditched their cats in an alley somewhere and walked away. But Marinette’s words make it seem like some widespread, commonly done thing, and that he just can’t wrap his brain around. It’s just as easy to make a rational stop at a designated animal shelter as it is to find a random alley, especially if you at all care for your pet.

 

“Well, I think that’s ridiculous,” he says, after a while. “And mean!” He huffs.

 

He’s starting to wish he’d been a little nicer to Napoléon.

 

“Some people abandon their kids, Adrien, what makes you think people wouldn’t abandon a cat?”

 

He’s struck by this. “Well, geez, when you put it like that...” he says quietly.

 

Marinette sits up again, in a rush. “Sorry! I didn’t mean -- I’m so sorry!”

 

“What?” He looks at her in confusion, wondering why she’s apologizing and why her face looks so sad.

 

“I didn’t mean to bring up -- I mean, I didn’t mean that’s what happened -- to you, or your da -- I’m just -- sorry.”

 

Oh.

 

He’s never really thought about it like that before. His dad did some bad stuff, admittedly, and even aside from the whole supervillain thing, he was a pretty bad parent.

 

But Adrien has never thought of himself as _abandoned,_ per se.

 

Alone, poorly loved, isolated, manipulated, lied to… but all that was out of his dad’s skewed view of human affection. Gabriel hadn’t _abandoned_ him.

 

Then again --

 

_Alone._

 

\-- Maybe he had.

 

“Oh,” he says. “Oh, no, Marinette.”

 

She looks stricken. He pulls her close, burying his hand in her hair.

 

“No, no, no, that’s not -- I wasn’t thinking of that at all, it’s okay.”

 

“Sorry.” Her voice is muffled from where her face is buried in his chest.

 

“It’s okay, really.” His arms tighten around her. “I _really_ wasn’t thinking about me. Well, maybe a little. But only cuz I was thinking maybe I should be nicer to Napoléon.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“I'm sure.”

 

“Positive?”

 

 _“Pawww_ sitive,” he purrs.

 

There’s a pause. “You’re lucky I feel too much remorse to throw a pillow at you.”

 

“You’re mistaken, I have terrible luck.”

 

She snorts.

 

“Black cat, remember?”

 

“You do just fine,” she says, squeezing his ribs.

  
  
“Well, I’ve got a pretty awesome good luck charm.”

 

“Are you talking about me?”

 

He cranes his neck to kiss her forehead. “Obviously.”

 

* * *

 

Marinette goes to work eventually, and he has no classes today, so he takes it upon himself to look for Napoléon while she’s gone.

 

It goes… poorly. At least, at first.

 

It’s a long process of knocking on doors in the cold, wet, grayness of the morning, and repeating the same spiel of an introduction with the same somewhat fake, model smile over and over, house after house, until he starts to wonder if Chat Noir would have better luck finding the missing feline.

 

“Hi, my name’s Adrien Agreste and my wife and I --”

 

“We live down the street and I --”

 

“I was just wondering if you’ve seen --”

 

“Maybe you’ve seen an orange --”

 

“An orange and white cat with an absurdly fluffy tail.”

 

He’s exasperated now, and his model smile has long since faded. The word ‘absurdly’ is a new addition as well. But this woman, who answers the door at the last house three blocks over from Adrien and Marinette’s house, has a sour expression on her face. The expression shouldn’t be a harbinger of good news, but it is.

 

“That’s your cat?” she asks, bluntly.

 

“Yes! You’ve seen him?”

 

She glowers. There’s a pause, but his sudden grin and the knowledge that Marinette will be happy later means he’s impervious to glared daggers. “Oh, I’ve seen him,” the woman says darkly. “Just a sec.”

 

She returns with none other than Napoléon, looking no worse for wear. Adrien grins even wider, and reaches for the cat. But the woman holds back a moment. “You might want to get him neutered before you let him roam the neighbourhood again.”

 

Adrien blinks.

 

Then blinks again.

 

“He likes _my_ cat a little too much,” the woman says.

 

Adrien’s eyes go wide. “Ohhhhhh! Oh, I am so sorry, he’s not -- well, we just got him, and he’s not really our cat? We sort of… found him. And we didn’t want to neuter him in case the owners claimed him…” The woman says nothing, and remains unimpressed, so he keeps babbling. “And he’s really an indoor cat most of the time, I don’t know what came over him yesterday, but he just bolted when we opened the door and --”

 

“All right, all right, don’t worry about it, just take him back.” The woman might just want him to shut up, but he doesn’t mind. He takes the orange fluffball into his arms like a baby and holds it tight. Napoléon mews contentedly. “I’ll call you when Duchess has kittens, and you can deal with them,” the woman says, and Adrien stares.

 

“Uh, okay,” he replies stupidly. He sort of thinks it’s an unfunny joke but when she looks at him expectantly, he digs a business card out of his pocket and hands it to her. The card is for the model Adrien Agreste, who no longer exists due to the existence of physics major and suffering student Adrien Agreste, but the number’s still good.

 

“See you around,” the woman says, and closes the door with a bang.

 

Adrien blinks at the door for a few seconds before shaking himself and turning away. He hefts Napoléon up a little higher on his chest. “You, monsieur, are a _scoundrel_ ,” he says emphatically. Napoléon mews in self-defense. Adrien gives him a wide-eyed look, “oh, I don’t _think_ so. Your behaviour is unaccountable.”

 

Napoléon meows again.

 

 _“Ah, non, petit monstre,_ you most certainly did _not_ learn that from me.”

 

If he talks to Napoléon all the way home like he’s carrying on a real, two-part conversation with the cat, no one sees or hears it. And if he really believes the cat can understand him… well, no one knows but him.

 

And when Marinette comes home later, and she finds the pair of them napping comfortably on the couch, Napoléon is curled up on Adrien’s chest, with his paws tucked in between Adrien’s splayed fingers, and she swears both of them are purring.

 

She’s distracted from taking a picture by Plagg, who has taken Adrien’s lack of consciousness as license to root through the kitchen for camembert, and Adrien wakes when he hears a crash and an exasperated _“Plagg!”_  

 

The moment may be ruined for photos, but Marinette keeps the image in her mind anyway.

 

* * *

 

Needless to say, Marinette is _very_ happy.

 

When the Plagg situation is remedied, and pleasantries are exchanged, Napoléon appears, rubbing his way round Marinette’s ankles. Adrien leans against the wall and watches with a smile as his wife scoops the animal up and cuddles him, squealing and cooing and scolding him. But it only lasts a few seconds before she looks up at Adrien, beaming.

 

“You!” she exclaims, and launches herself at him. He's already grinning as her hand presses into the back of his neck, and the next thing he knows, he is being thoroughly kissed.

 

“Where did you find him?” she asks, when they part.

 

“How do you know I did? Maybe he just… reappeared.”

 

“You're so stupid,” she says, and kisses him again. It's a little too close for Napoléon, who is sandwiched between them, and he jumps out of Marinette's arms with a squawk. The lovers pay him no mind, except to pull each other even closer.

 

Marinette steps back, breathless. “I knew you secretly liked him.”

 

“Marinette, I told you last night I liked him. That's not a secret.”

 

“But seriously, where was he?”

 

“Three blocks over. It seems he's made friends with a _girl_ cat, and I'd just like to say, I was yelled at because of his poor choices and he stood idly by without even offering a _word_ of apology.” Adrien doesn't mention the possibility of kittens for two reasons. One: he doesn't really believe kittens will happen, and two: he doesn’t want to get Marinette’s hopes up, especially on account of Reason One.

 

“Three blocks over? Did you ask at every house?”

 

“Yeah. Well, the ones where someone was home. Which was most of them, but still. It only took like an hour and a half. Ish.”

 

She has a look on her face that he’s not really sure how to read. It’s a good look, he can tell, sort of soft and smiling with her eyes kind of shiny like how she looks at Napoléon sometimes, but it’s also sort of… melty. And then she bites her bottom lip and beams at him. “You spent your morning off looking for my cat?”

 

Adrien feels himself flush a little, which is stupid, because they’ve been together forever, and in love forever, and married for almost three years now, and there’s no reason why doing something cute for her should still make him blush, but dammit, it does. He rubs the back of his head. “Uh, yeah, I guess.”

 

She tugs on his waist, bringing him close again, and stands on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his chin.

 

“What did I do to deserve you?” she says, looking up at him with the softest smile he’s ever seen.

 

His blush deepens. “Um,” he says.

 

She laughs and kisses him again. There’s no real need for words after that.

 

* * *

 

Adrien’s a lot fonder of Napoléon now. Maybe it’s just because Marinette is so happy, and that makes Adrien happy, which makes him nicer, but at any rate, he finds it hard to be embarrassed about his change of heart (even when Marinette teases him about it) when she’s also kissing him for it.

 

(Okay, so it’s not like he was deprived of kisses _before_ the Napoléon incident, but still, he feels like there’s been a slight uptick in frequency lately.)

 

She’s like sunshine when she’s happy. She always says he’s the sunshine in the relationship, but he thinks that’s nonsense, because when he sees her hoist Napoléon up on her shoulder, and feed him bits of whatever she’s cooking, or when she swirls a laser pointer around the floor and laughs hysterically, or ties another bow around the cat’s neck just to show off how handsome he is, Adrien just sees sunshine in her smile.

 

And that’s why it’s just so unfair when the phone call comes.

 

It’s unfair to take the wind out of her sails like that, the light out of her smile. It’s unfair that he’s the one who answered the phone, because now _he’s_ the one who has to take the light away.

 

At the same time though, he’s sort of glad he took the call, and not her, because he’s not sure how she would have reacted, or what she would have said. She always gets impulsive when she’s hurt, and he’s glad she didn’t have the chance to say something she regrets.

 

The phone call is the owners.

 

The _cat’s_ owners.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *flings this at you* I DONT KNOW HOW THIS GOT SO LONG I SWEAR
> 
> the third part has angst and kittens stay tuned fam
> 
> (thanks for the lovely comments on the first part, yall make my day and i love you)
> 
> ETA: i'd just like to point out the 'true owners appear' thing wAS NOT my plan but SOMEONe mentioned it and it was too good an idea for me to leave alone but IT MAKES ME SAD


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